The Litter
by nneurosis
Summary: When Black Hayate becomes a father, Hawkeye and Mustang arrive in Resembool bearing tiny, fluffy gifts. Edwin puppy love fluff with a side of Royai.


A/N: For my friend Sam. Rating is for Ed's potty mouth.

* * *

One day Roy Mustang finds a puppy in his boot. That's the last straw.

"I can't live like this anymore, Hawkeye," he wails, standing in their living room with the boot in one hand and the puppy in the other. This one is particularly squiggly, mostly black with a white face, and weighs about a pound. As soon as Roy appears the rest of the dogs come out—a veritable herd of them, Hayate and Tsunami and all the little dog children they had brought into the Mustang-Hawkeye household six weeks ago. When Riza (and Roy, but mainly Riza) adopted Tsunami so Hayate wouldn't have to spend quite so many long workdays alone, neither of them had anticipated the blossoming of dog love that ensued. Or whatever you want to call it.

Riza is sitting on the sofa with a book and cup of tea, looking unnervingly relaxed. "Oh?"

"There are dogs _everywhere_!"

"I like dogs."

"But seven, Hawkeye!" The puppy in Roy's hand starts trying to nibble his fingers. "Seven is too many—this apartment is too small for seven dogs, and when the little ones grow up it'll only be worse."

She glances at him. Her face gives nothing away. "If you can't handle a few puppies, what are you going to do when the baby comes?"

For a moment he thinks he's going to pass out. And then—

"Your sense of humor is twisted," he snorts.

Riza smirks into her tea. He is very disappointed to realize he enjoys this kind of behavior. He collapses on the couch beside her, and lets the puppy roll between them. "You know we can't keep them all."

Her smile falters. She _does_ love the dogs, and he loves them, too; he feels a twinge of guilt, and then Hayate leaps unexpectedly into his lap with very sharp little paws. "I suppose you're right," she sighs.

"That's the sexiest thing you've ever said to me." This earns one of her special, magical, rare laughs, a sound that always lifts his spirits. He adds, a little glummer, "Not that I've got any idea what we're going to _do_ with a bunch of puppies."

Riza lifts the puppy, a little girl, into her lap and starts to massage her soft belly. "I've got a few ideas. But we're keeping this one."

* * *

"When we got married you vowed to listen to me, Winry!"

"I vowed no such thing. Don't be a big baby."

"I'm not—I'm not a _big baby_!"

Winry simply harrumphs and rolls up the blueprint over which they've been arguing.

"That's my study," he tries to tell her as they leave the workshop—or, as she leaves the workshop and he trails after dumbly. "I need a study, Winry. That room is supposed to be my study! I have very important work to do and I need a place for it."

"We'll put your study in the attic."

"You're going to make the guy with the heavy automail leg go all the way to the attic."

She stops short and turns to look at him, a pained expression on her face. Ed stiffens. "What did you just call my leg?"

"_Your_ leg!" Her mean look intensifies and he shrinks. "Light as a feather. Best damned automail leg I ever had. I love climbing stairs!"

"_Hmph_," goes Winry, as if to say, _damn straight, you'll grovel_, and Ed pouts while he follows her into the kitchen, where Pinako works calmly on an automail hand.

"Arguing about the new house again?"

"Winry wants to use my study for some weird secret purpose."

"You'll see," Winry tells him, sounding more Zen than her usual self.

"I _will_ see! I'll see that I get my study."

"Well," says Pinako, "You two are welcome to continue living here as long as you like."

He catches Winry's eye over her grandmother's head. The prospect of living alone in the big Rockbell house had been daunting Pinako since the wedding—not that she's talked about it, but Winry has told Ed, and Ed trusts Winry's sense of Pinako. He trusts Winry's sense of most people, really.

"The house won't be ready for another year, at least," Winry reassures her grandmother, while pouring herself a slow, careful glass of milk. "Maybe even longer. Who knows how busy we're going to be."

"Yeah, we're pretty important," Ed declares happily, though he doesn't know what Winry means.

"I know you're busy. That's why Den's so bored lately," says Pinako, squinting at her work on the delicate metal hand.

The ageing dog lies on the kitchen floor, and only flicks an ear at the sound of her name. He spies Winry frowning at her pet's indifference, but before he can pipe up, there's a pounding at the front door.

"Oh," Winry brightens, starting for the entrance, "Riza's here!"

"Lieutenant Hawkeye's here?" Usually when Mustang or one of his people hoofs it down to Resembool from East City, they call ahead. Or at least Winry _tells_ him they've called ahead. Pinako shrugs, and Ed stomps after his wife (his _wife_—it's been over a year and he's still not used to that).

Indeed, Riza Hawkeye stands on their front steps, out of uniform today—and behind her is Mustang, also in plainclothes, holding a cardboard box. To him, they always look kind of weird without their military get-ups, no matter how many years go by. Ed had been ignoring the scuttlebutt about the Colonel and Lieutenant—well, technically the General and the Captain nowadays, but he's never getting used to _that_—living together because it's bizarre, like thinking about his math teacher and his Latin teacher kissing. Winry, however, looks as delighted to see them _together_ as she does to see them at all. He reminds himself to ask her later if she agrees that Hawkeye could probably do better.

"It's so good to see you," Winry chimes, throwing her arms around Hawkeye with such enthusiasm that the Lieutenant seems a little startled, but she smiles warmly at the younger woman after a moment.

"Fullmetal," grunts Mustang, as Winry ushers the two of them inside with a bounce in her step.

Ed thinks he spies the box in Mustang's arms _moving_, but maybe he imagined it. "I didn't know you guys were coming to Resembool."

"Oh, did I forget to tell you that?" asks Winry, her voice unusually high. "Silly me." Ed catches a weird look passing between Winry and the Lieutenant. There's been a lot of _weirdness_ going on today. He doesn't like it.

"We brought you something," says the Lieutenant—it takes Ed a moment to realize she's talking directly to him.

Then Mustang's box _jerks_ and he swears, fumbling it. "They're kicking again!"

"They?" Ed manages, and Mustang loses hold of the box, so that its contents tip out on to the floor of the Rockbell parlor—

And there are two tiny, round puppies skittering across the wood right toward him. Ed shrieks—Winry is laughing hysterically—and falls to the ground, where the animals swarm him, yapping. There's a low _ruff_ from the kitchen and in comes Den, more energetic than anyone has seen her in years, and the puppies swarm her, too, and before Ed can pull himself up all three dogs are climbing over him. "What the hell!" he shouts, and is greeted with a mouthful of Den's tail.

"I can't believe you saved this country," Mustang sighs, frowning down at him.

"Hayate and Tsnuami are parents now," Hawkeye elaborates, clearly stifling a laugh. "There are five puppies. We're keeping one, and we've given two to Gracia and Elicia, and when I told Winry about it she seemed to think you all might be ready for some new additions." Ed finally gets to his feet with a grunt; Winry, a little red in the face, arrives in front of him to pick dog hair off his lip.

"Aren't they so adorable?" she inquires. She sounds nervous—the puppies distracted him, but Ed senses he's still missing something. Hawkeye watches them with too much care.

"_This_ is the big secret?" he demands, disbelieving.

"I thought it would be a fun surprise." Winry slips into coyness, and then grins. "And it was. It was super fun to watch you freak out about a bunch of puppies." Mustang snickers behind them, and Ed tosses him a glare.

"They're brothers, Edward," Hawkeye offers, linking her arm with Mustang's.

Ed glances down at the scrap of dog crawling over his foot. The creature looks up at him with huge brown eyes, hollowing his stomach. The second puppy intervenes, and the two of them roll away in a play-tussle. It's been six months since they last saw Al. His letters are too infrequent.

"All right," Ed mutters, "we'll keep the dogs, I guess."

The next thing he knows, Winry is dragging him. "Come on, let's go tell Granny what all the fuss is about," she declares, and scoops a puppy into her hand on the way to the kitchen.

That night, after the Colonel and the Lieutenant are long gone for East City, and Pinako has gone to bed, Ed sits on the porch with the three dogs. He can hear Winry humming through an open window on the second floor—she's in the bath, he suspects, or just out, she always hums in the bath. The puppies have tuckered Den out and she sleeps soundly, one of them gnawing on her metal leg. The other one, who is the calmer and gentler of the two, amuses himself with a leaf. The moon is very bright, and sheep are baying in a field down the road. The country's stillness pleases Ed in a way that stillness usually can't; looking out on a peaceful field makes him feel he's looking out on a peaceful country, too.

Footfalls creak in the house, and he turns to see Winry slipping around the screen door in a robe, hair wet, skin exposed from the knee down.

"Hey," he says right away, because it's the first thing that comes into his head, "You shouldn't come out here at night with your legs out like that, the mosquitos'll eat you alive."

But Winry lowers herself to sit beside him anyway, a tiny smile on her lips. "Okay, Ed."

"Don't come crying to me when you're all itchy tomorrow morning!"

The Al puppy—the gentle one, he kicks himself mentally for naming a dog after his brother, even just for convenience's sake—climbs into Winry's lap and she strokes his little head. "I won't."

"Okay. Well. Good." It is funny, or sad, how awkward and teenage he still sometimes feels when she gives him one of those tiny smiles. She's doing it now and, folding his arms over his chest, he glowers out into the night.

"There's something I have to tell you, Ed."

His head snaps up at the new vulnerability in her tone—and when he looks at her, her eyes are a little wet, and he thinks, _oh, shit_, because no matter how many years they do this he never gets any more comfortable with Winry crying.

"Are you okay!"

"I'm fine, I'm fine, Ed, it's not—"

"Please don't cry, Winry!"

"I'm not going to _cry_—"

"What's the matter, why are you all—"

"_Ed_." That shuts him up. "I need to tell you something important," she says, with a sniffle. "But it's really good. So if I cry, it'll be…"

"Tears of joy?"

"Yeah. Tears of joy." He nods once and swallows hard as Winry composes herself, doting on the dog in her lap, and then shuts her eyes. "The reason I didn't tell you about the puppies is because Riza and I were talking, and—and she said they might be good practice."

"Good practice?" he echoes. Like… training them? Did Winry want to train the puppies so she could train other people? Did Winry want to train _him_!—she did get so upset about his leaving dirty dishes around the house, oh no.

She gives him a long look, like she hopes he's going to guess whatever it is she means, but he has no clue. Nadda. Zilch. So Winry keeps going: "The room you wanted to be your study."

"The room that _is_ my study," Ed corrects, ready to flop back into that argument at the drop of a hat. Winry slides her hand into his, and presses a kiss to his cheek. When she pulls away, there's a huge grin on her face.

"I was thinking it would make a good nursery."

Oh.

_Oh_.

She throws her arms around his neck, the tears already welling in her eyes, the commotion rousing Den from slumber, and maybe the whole of Resembool with her. "Congratulations, Papa!"

Of course, this time around, he cries too.


End file.
